Oncomarkers: what is it?

The number of cancer diseases is growing, unfortunately, from year to year, despite the fact that medicine has managed to achieve considerable success in this area. As you know, the curability of cancer will depend directly on when it was discovered: the earlier, the better. An effective method is analysis for cancer markers. What this is and what is needed, we will discuss in this article.

The basic concept

When the appearance of tumors in the human body, the composition of the blood changes. Onkomarkers appear in it. What it is? This is a special kind of proteins, the appearance of which accompanies the development of oncology, that is, the organism separates them, reacting to the disease. Recently, oncomarkers are increasingly being used to diagnose cancer at a time when its primary symptoms do not appear, although previously they have been actively used to monitor the disease. They help to detect the presence of a tumor in the body several months earlier than ultrasound, x-rays and MRI.

So, oncomarkers (what it is, we looked at above) are found in the blood of a person presumed to have a cancerous tumor.

Types of oncomarkers

For the effectiveness of diagnosis, doctors use several types. It is caused by the fact that none of them can give a 100% guarantee that a person is sick with cancer. There is a possibility of developing a benign tumor. Thus, the accuracy of oncomarkers is 70-80%. That is a fairly high rate, particularly in the early stages of the disease, when other types of diagnosis are useless.

Most often appointed oncomarkers:

• Prostate;
• Ovaries;
• pancreas;
• The mammary gland.

Also, it is impossible to do without them in the following situations:

1. To assess the effectiveness of surgical treatment. Accordingly, a decrease in their number indicates a successful intervention, and an increase - on the contrary.
2. When predicting a cancer.
3. During the postoperative period, when it is necessary to establish the presence of metastases.

Elevated oncomarker. Is it always cancer?

Given the error that is possible with any study, one must understand that not always a high amount of this type of protein in the body speaks of cancer. For example, breast cancer markers are much more accurate than CA-125, in which an increase in their number may indicate the presence of any gynecological diseases other than oncology.

How to take a blood test?

To hand over a blood on onkomarkery it is possible on a direction of the doctor at suspicion on a tumor. Decipher the testimony of the tests can only he. As for the process of donating blood, it is produced in the morning on an empty stomach, the fence is made from the vein. If the results of the analysis are controversial, the diagnosis will be made more precise by MRI, ultrasound, gastroscopy, biochemical analysis, and so on.

I would like to note that the actively used oncomarkers (which we reviewed in the article) in the practice of oncologists have positively influenced the dynamics of treatment of cancer patients and monitoring of their disease.